Maurer School of Law: Indiana University Digital Repository @ Maurer Law Articles by Maurer Faculty Faculty Scholarship 1970 Legal Remedies for Overurbanization: The Ghanaian Experience Robert L. Birmingham Indiana University School of Law Carolyn S. Birmingham Follow this and additional works at: https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/facpub Part of the African Studies Commons, Growth and Development Commons, and the Law and Economics Commons Recommended Citation Birmingham, Robert L. and Birmingham, Carolyn S., "Legal Remedies for Overurbanization: The Ghanaian Experience" (1970). Articles by Maurer Faculty. 1703. https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/facpub/1703 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at Digital Repository @ Maurer Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles by Maurer Faculty by an authorized administrator of Digital Repository @ Maurer Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. LEGAL REMEDIES FOR OVERURBANIZATION: THE GHANAIAN EXPERIENCE Robert L.* and Carolyn S. Birmingham** I. INTRODUCTION One of the most striking illustrations of the frustration of prim- itive communities suddenly confronted with the material abundance of Western society is the so-called "cargo cult." In parts of Mela- nesia it is believed that all trade goods, having been created in the world of the dead by ancestors of indigenous populations as gifts for their descendants, have been misappropriated by foreign intruders. Prophets predict the arrival of cargoes of manufactured products to be distributed to their rightful recipients and urge the construction of wharves and airfields to accommodate the expected ships and planes. At the height of such movements, cult members typically suspend all traditional economic activity and prepare feasts of welcome; in one instance they set aside a certain time each day to "sit, dressed in their best clothes at the tables, decorated, European fashion, with flowers in bottles, which [had] been set up to entertain the returning spirits."' Among the more sophisticated peoples of the world's under- developed regions, identical frustrations have stimulated attempts to duplicate Western economic achievement. Without unprecedented technological advance, however, many of these attempts will fail. To raise the level of affluence of the present population of the earth by the year 2010 to that now enjoyed in the United States would, for example, require annual extraction of seventy-five times as much iron, one hundred times as much copper, two hundred times as much lead, and two hundred and fifty times as much tin as is currently 2 mined. While such ecological barriers appear insurmountable, de- velopment today is less often retarded by ecological constraints than * A.B. 1960, J.D. 1963, Ph.D. 1967, University of Pittsburgh; LL.M., Harvard Law School, 1965. Professor of Law, Indiana University. ** A.B., Indiana University, 1969. We thank the International Legal Center and the Midwest Universities Consortium for International Activities for financial support which has made this study possible. They are not responsible for the views we express. I L. MAe, AUSTRALIA IN NEW GUINEA 64 (1948). See I. JARviE, THE REvOLUTION IN ANTHROPOLOGY (1967); P. LAWRENCE, ROAD BELONG CARGO (1964). 2 Heilbroner, Book Review, N.Y. REv. oF Booxs, April 23, 1970, at 3. OVERURBANIZATION by limitations generated within the social structure itself. Thus recent demographic changes in many developing nations may pro- vide impediments to, as well as opportunities for, growth. Close scru- tiny of the effects of such changes can serve to elaborate that precarious balance of forces which may facilitate or restrict devel- opment. In the last century the aggregate population of African cities with at least 100,000 inhabitants has increased by a factor of more than thirty. West Africa in particular has experienced unprece- dented urban growth in recent decades: the populations of Abidjan, Cotonou, and Dakar-the capitals respectively of the Ivory Coast, Dahomey, and Senegal-are more than ten times what their levels were less than fifty years ago; the Nigerian centers of Lagos and 8 Ibadan now each contain over 600,000 inhabitants. In this article we examine the difficulties associated with urbanization in the West African nation of Ghana, focusing primarily upon the impact of the expanding urban constituency on economic growth and policies de- signed to promote that growth. While these difficulties appear par- ticularly acute in Ghana, the findings may be applied without substantial adjustment both in other African states and in emerging nations elsewhere. This initial section provides background to the Ghanaian experience through a summary of the particular pressures which urbanization might be expected to engender. Early studies of development presented the problem confront- ing emerging nations in terms of the need to accelerate the rate of growth of per capita income by obtaining funds sufficient to main- tain high levels of investment.4 More recently, growth has begun to be supplemented as a measure of national success by the criterion of distributive equity. The two standards frequently yield widely inconsistent evaluations. In particular, economic equality appears often a consequence of prosperity achieved through prior oppression of one class by another. Economic development under capitalism has traditionally generated extreme distributive inequalities. Low wages encouraged production by conditioning survival of the im- poverished worker on continuing maximization of his labor effort. Conversely, a generous return to capital both augmented preexisting concentrations of wealth and invited investment by rendering al- 3 J. CALDWELL, AicAw RURAL-URBAN MIGRATION: THE MOVEMENT TO GHANA'S TowNs 5 (1969) [hereinafter cited as THE MOVEMENT TO GHANA'S TOWNS]; WORLD ALMANAC AND BOOK OF FACTS 575, 576 (L. Long ed. 1970); Andreski, Urban Jungles of West Africa, 7 DEVELOPMENT DIGEST 74 (1969). 4 See, e.g., E. DOMAR, ESSAYS IN TEE THEORY OF ECONOMIC GROWTH (1957); R. HARROD, TOwARDS A DYNAMIC ECONOMICS (1948). See also Bruton, Growth Models in Underdeveloped Economies, 63 J. PoL. EcoN. 322, 335 (1955). UCLA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 18: 252 ternatives to consumption more attractive. Saving was a function of uneven distribution: in the early stages of industrialization, rapid growth required depriving the majority of satisfactions beyond sus- tenance to permit others greater incomes than they could conve- niently expend. In Africa and other parts of the developing world, economic privilege is essentially unchanged by the egalitarian reforms now common in less impoverished societies. Professor Dumont points out that a deputy in Francophonic Africa typically earns as much per month of work as the average peasant earns in twenty-four years.' Another writer has recently asserted that in the Congo (Leopoldville) barely 1 percent of the population receives 50 per- cent of the national income." Economic inequality, though, may be inevitable in a developmental context: Social equality appears to be a luxury only the affluent societies can afford.... • . The very process of highly educating a group of leaders inevitably opens a wide gap between the privileged few and the masses. On purely economic grounds this large investment in educa- tion must be protected by the best medical care, housing, and food. This bare minimum alone makes the leadership privileged, and unfor- tunately, in most countries the leaders have not limited themselves to a bare minimum.7 Industrialization is considered by leaders in many emerging nations to be the key to development." Industrialization, however, can impede advances based on exploitation of labor in two ways. First, a relatively highly trained and, hence, less docile work force is an essential element in a technologically advanced society. Com- plex machinery is unproductive unless conjoined with skilled labor. Moreover, as has been particularly evident in Chinese Communist efforts to achieve technical proficiency without sacrificing ideological purity,' to educate the worker is to provide him a perspective from 5 R. DUMONT, FALSE START IN AFRICA 81 (2d ed. P. Ott transl. 1969). 6 R. VERBEEx, LE CONGO EN QUESTION 129 (1965), translated in S. ANDRESKI, THx AFRICAN PREDICAMENT: A STUDY IN THE PATHOLOGY OF MODERNISATION 25-26 (1968). 7 T. DE GREGORI, TECHNOLOGY AND THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF THE TRoPi- CAL AFRICAN FRONTER 211 & n.78 (1969). The author notes that many of the diffi- culties experienced by the Congo following independence have been attributed to relative deprivation of the populace compared to the new elite. id. at 212-13 n.83. See Young, Violence and Rebellion in the Congo, in THE CONGO, AFRICA, AND A.SERICA 13 (G. Gappert & G. Thomas eds. 1965). 8 "What alchemy was to the Middle Ages, industrialization is to the under- developed world of this century-the magic elixir that can transform feudal societies." P. NEHExmIS, LATIN AMERICA: MYTH AND REALy 185 (1964). 9 See, e.g., MU FU-SHENG, THE WILTING OF THE HUNDRED FLOWERS:, THE CHINESE INTELLIGENTSIA UNDER MAO (1962). 19701 OVER URBANIZATION which to evaluate the society which he serves. Consequent discon- govern- tent is often rooted in economic inequities, yet "every stable to being ment in history has depended on the resignation of the poor 10 poor.) in- Second, geographically uncontrolled industrialization almost concentrating evitably increases the power of the proletariat by centers. workers,